Question: As you are walking along a dusty highway, out of the corner of your eye, you spot a key lying on the ground. Describe the key. Would you pick it up?
I recently got elected as the President of the Phil.Gen.Hospital's Physician's Association (UP-PGH PA). The post was held last year by the Chief Resident of the Dept of Psychiatry. Before that, by a Senior Resident from the Department of Surgery. What with the overall difficulty of managing toxic patients, here I am about to pick up another responsibility.
The PA is a near dead organization. More like a loose association of disinterested individuals with different goals and widely divergent means to an end. I plan on waking this slumbering beast. Make its diversity its strength, make its individual egos its driving power. But first I have to consolidate its key members. Rouse the arms and legs that long lay dormant. May luck shine on us. We would surely need it if we are to survive.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Thursday, February 09, 2006
I see you
My last two months in the surgical ICU are almost up. Well I did have a good time in my rotation. Got to meet new people, new personalities. Had to force myself to read though. Its a welcome relief and I did learn much.
I was able to finally sift through and organize at last the SICU jungle of medical abstracts and updated journals. Something I'm really proud of since I personally have met with all the surgeons who have tried for the past 3 yrs (and failed bravely) to keep the files in a more or less user friendly format. Try dealing with 2.5 GB of data in 2.8million something files and you fairly get the idea. All this haphazardly dumped in more than 200 folders and linked and cross linked with each other. No wonder sometimes files just disappear under the tens of daily updates and uploads.
Now try searching for a specific article of interest.
The problem lay not just with record keeping. The more daunting task at hand is how to make all these life saving data available to just about anyone who knows how to use a keyboard. Yep. The answer lay in indexing. Search through individual files for certain keywords within each document and you have a prescription for masochism induced insanity.
In retrospect, the answer lay in front of me all the time. For how can one see the path when one is already walking it? Suffice it to say that I did have my share of sleepless nights (just two though), tweaking the files and putting them up in proper order.
That is my gift to the next SICU rotators.
A wealth of information literally at their fingertips. Now made accesible to anyone who knows how to type.
I was able to finally sift through and organize at last the SICU jungle of medical abstracts and updated journals. Something I'm really proud of since I personally have met with all the surgeons who have tried for the past 3 yrs (and failed bravely) to keep the files in a more or less user friendly format. Try dealing with 2.5 GB of data in 2.8million something files and you fairly get the idea. All this haphazardly dumped in more than 200 folders and linked and cross linked with each other. No wonder sometimes files just disappear under the tens of daily updates and uploads.
Now try searching for a specific article of interest.
The problem lay not just with record keeping. The more daunting task at hand is how to make all these life saving data available to just about anyone who knows how to use a keyboard. Yep. The answer lay in indexing. Search through individual files for certain keywords within each document and you have a prescription for masochism induced insanity.
In retrospect, the answer lay in front of me all the time. For how can one see the path when one is already walking it? Suffice it to say that I did have my share of sleepless nights (just two though), tweaking the files and putting them up in proper order.
That is my gift to the next SICU rotators.
A wealth of information literally at their fingertips. Now made accesible to anyone who knows how to type.
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